My old man is a soldier of Zion. On Sundays, when he is not out trying to eke out a living, he is immersed in the Zion Christian Church (ZCC); you can spot him in the streets of Orlando East kitted to the nines in his warrior outfit.
You will sense a quiet confidence as he strides through the streets as if floating on air in his snow-white Manyanyatha boots that anthropology Professor Jean Comaroff aptly describes as ”large, white, flat-soled boots, specially crafted within the movement itself and carefully whitened for ritual performances. The boots often exaggerate the size of the wearers’ feet to almost comic proportions.”
On his head will be a black, military-style peak hat with a five-pointed star with the letters ”ZCC” inscribed on it. For the rest of his outfit he will be dressed in neatly starched khaki trousers and a jacket complimented by a khaki shirt and a matching tie.
A badge, first introduced by the church’s founder, Bishop Engenas Barnabas Lekganyane, in 1928, made of a combination of green and black cloth with the five-pointed star carrying the ZCC inscription right over his heart completes his outfit.
The badge helps church members identify one another and is also an outward sign of loyalty.
In his church, according to academics Sello Galane and Marcus Ramogalo, my old man is considered part of a troupe often referred to as motheo wa kereke, the foundation of the ZCC Church.
The all-male troupe — often referred to as mokhukhu, meaning ”a shack” — is known for its upbeat and legendary, marathon-like dancing, which involves jumping high into the air and returning to the ground with a thumping sound.
The dance is considered to be symbolic of the physical ”stamping out” of evil or evil spirits and forms an important part of the church’s ritual.
My father’s type of uniform originally arose from what Professor Elias Lukhaimane describes as a ”black to black secession” within the broader Zionist movement. Zionism first arrived in South Africa in 1905. Adherents later broke away from the larger Zionist movement and developed their own ZCC uniform.
As opposed to the free-flowing traditional garb of Zionists, the ZCC opted, at least as far as the men are concerned, for a Western-style outfit reminiscent of the imperial era.
The women of the church wear what Comaroff labels as the ”standard transformation of the Protestant model”: calf-length straight skirts, a Victorian tunic with rounded collar and a neat headscarf. The tunic is daffodil-yellow, while the skirt is normally blue or bottle green.
The roots of the Zionist movement can be traced to a longing by Africans to fuse African customs into their religious systems, which in the past were steeped in a Catholic or Protestant ethos.
”As members of an organisation in which they are both servants and the warriors of a charismatic leader, the dress is analogous to that of functionaries who, in the wider society, work both as guardians and attendants of powerful institutions — the ZCC man appropriates the insignia of those who wield the sword and pen — in his experience, the visible faces of colonial and neocolonial domination,” says Comaroff on the power of the regalia.
Lekganyane is said to have formed the church after a vision that first appeared to him in 1910 urging him to find a church that practises ”triune immersion”, or baptism that involves being dipped into water three times.
In 1912, Lekganyane set out for Johannesburg to find a church that would live up to his vision.
He returned to his native Thabakgone, in the province of Limpopo, in 1924, after disagreements with leaders of two other Zionist movements he had previously been part of. A year later he formed the ZCC and after first settling in Thabakgone he eventually declared Moria City as the headquarters of his newly formed church.
On Friday morning at the crack of dawn, Churchill Phakiso Alcock, a short and sturdy, bald-headed, middle-aged man, will rise to embark on his annual journey to Moria for Passover celebrations with millions of his fellow ZCC members.
The members will all gather to hear a traditional sermon by the third-generation leader of their church — Bishop Barnabas Lekganyane.